Deficiency or genetics?

[HarrySchleem69]

I know this topic has been discussed to death on various forums but it's nice to just get an opinion from more experienced growers. This is my first grow and I'm currently 2 weeks into flower. Im noticing lots of purple petioles and some purple striping on the main stalk and on a couple side shoots. Also noticing some yellow in the veins of the leaf, mainly just in the middle. I really couldn't come up with any definitive answers as to what it really is but maybe one of you had some symptoms that looked very similar to mine and had a way to fix it or found out if it was just your genetics. I don't know the strain as it was some bag seed. Im in soil in a 6 gallon fabric pot.

 

[Pepperhead]

Looks normal to me
Purple in stems happens and is often just genetics in my experience

 

[Dwight Monk]

She looks fine, trying to fix problems that not there will almost always give you problems And purple is "normal" for many strains, cooler temps will make it more pronounced also in my experience.

 

[013]

Hey Harry,

Welcome to 420...! Agree, your plants are looking good, do you have some nutes? She’s gonna need them

 

[HarrySchleem69]

Yeah I have some nutes but I don't know if I'll even need them. She's been planted in a soil mixture of some cheap non-fertilized soil and miracle grow moisture control soil. It's like a 70/30 mix with the miracle grow being the lesser of the two. I've tried regular miracle grow in the past and it really burned my seedlings and younger plants but due to lack of funds at the time, I really just went with what I had. I figured "diluting" the miracle grow in some non-fertilized soil, and me picking out every single little fertilizer ball that I could find out of the soil as I mixed it in, maybe she won't be overfed. She's been in there for almost a month now. If problems were to come i should've already seen at least some signs shouldn't i? The nute ratios for this particular miracle grow brand is 0.21%N, I think like 0.07% P and 0.17% K. Are those real heavy ratios for soil? I still find myself confused because on the liquid organic nutes I have they are whole numbers, not decimals

 

[013]

Agree doesn’t sound like much but you did good by diluting the MG and picking out what you could see. She is just now getting started good and has many weeks left to run but at this point in flower she will suck up nutes more heavily. But overall very nice looking specimen - keep doing what you are doing!!

I recognize she is probably out of her grow space for the photo shoot but keeping her elevated up off the floor or tent will help her run a bit warmer and therefore faster too.

 

[HarrySchleem69]

Agree doesn’t sound like much but you did good by diluting the MG and picking out what you could see. She is just now getting started good and has many weeks left to run but at this point in flower she will suck up nutes more heavily. But overall very nice looking specimen - keep doing what you are doing!!

Ok so I just want to be sure I have all of my questions answered lol. Regarding the MG soil, the nute ratios for the brand im using isn't all that much to begin with right? And since I diluted it and picked out any fert balls that I saw, over time it will eventually weaken, maybe to the point to where I start seeing deficiencies due to the nutrients being so low. Am I right in thinking this? And also, I have a flower/bloom organic liquid fertilizer that is rated at 1-3-1. If I were to use this at like 1/4 or 1/2 strength, do you think it would cause nute burn or screw up my pH? I want to try to get some P and K in there for my plant since the MG soil was lower in P but im scared im gonna cause more problems than good

 

[HarrySchleem69]

This is the flower nutes I mentioned. I really don't know what alot of this means or if it'll even benefit my plant. I just don't want to cause any sort of nute burn or mess with something that might not even need messing with at the moment. But im also worried if I wait too long then I'm gonna hurt my yields because I "neglected" my plant of some much needed nutes

 

[013]

I think your logic is good, yes over time water weakens it, but that’s the problem with slow release ferts ... when does it dissipate? Might be ok for tomatoes or Grannies ferns but for our crop, the unpredictablity can be an issue. I do think a lowered dose for starters is appropriate, feed and wait to see how she responds, that liquid fert also has calcium which is good but does not have magnesuim - so a pinch of epsoms added to water or top dressed will carry the ball for magnesium.

But honestly most bloom ferts are higher P & K but very little or no nitrogen. There are ways to make low budget homemade ferts and you might want to search for and sniff around Emilya‘s page here. She has tons of links in her signature line for practically everything.

I do think she will need nutes soon as the demands of flower are considerable, but you do want the soil to have what the plant needs to power thru without burning, or being too weak, deficient or causing a lockout.

 

[HarrySchleem69]

I think your logic is good, yes over time water weakens it, but that’s the problem with slow release ferts ... when does it dissipate? Might be ok for tomatoes or Grannies ferns but for our crop, the unpredictablity can be an issue. I do think a lowered dose for starters is appropriate, feed and wait to see how she responds, that liquid fert also has calcium which is good but does not have magnesuim - so a pinch of epsoms added to water or top dressed will carry the ball for magnesium.

But honestly most bloom ferts are higher P & K but very little or no nitrogen. There are ways to make low budget homemade ferts and you might want to search for and sniff around Emilya‘s page here. She has tons of links in her signature line for practically everything.

I do think she will need nutes soon as the demands of flower are considerable, but you do want the soil to have what the plant needs to power thru without burning, or being too weak, deficient or causing a lockout.

Thank you for the help! I've been trying to keep her on a real strict schedule for watering. Going by that she should be needing water today, maybe tomorrow. I will add a dose at 1/4 strength or so and see what happens. Is it bad to add calcium without magnesium and vice versa?

 

[013]

Most folks here use a cal-mag product simply because the nutes are geared to NPK and not much else but calcium & magnesium go hand in hand

 

[Southerncough]

See if you can find a bag of earthworm castings online or at the garden center and sprinkle a layer on top of your soil (aka top dress) and just water on top of it and all of the good nutrients and bacteria from said worm castings will help your plants tremendously with processing what's available in your soil mix. Maybe even boost flavor and aroma!
Also you can put some in a bucket of water with an air stone to create a "worm tea" that the plants love.
For your next grow mix some into your soil (up to 1/3rd) and reap the benefits!

 

[HarrySchleem69]

See if you can find a bag of earthworm castings online or at the garden center and sprinkle a layer on top of your soil (aka top dress) and just water on top of it and all of the good nutrients and bacteria from said worm castings will help your plants tremendously with processing what's available in your soil mix. Maybe even boost flavor and aroma!
Also you can put some in a bucket of water with an air stone to create a "worm tea" that the plants love.
For your next grow mix some into your soil (up to 1/3rd) and reap the benefits!

Yeah dude I've seen bags of worm castings at my local nursery and I wanted to get some but again, I was scared of causing any issues with my plant lol. This plant suffered some serious pH issues and some lockouts while she was fairly young in veg and ever since then I'm been extremely paranoid to do anything to my soil in fear of causing it again. Although I think I know what MIGHT'VE caused it, I thought using bottled purified water would be better so I switched to that instead of tap water then BAM fucked up plant. After I flushed her and went back to using my tap water she recovered pretty nicely. Here's a photo of when it first started happening

 

[HarrySchleem69]

See if you can find a bag of earthworm castings online or at the garden center and sprinkle a layer on top of your soil (aka top dress) and just water on top of it and all of the good nutrients and bacteria from said worm castings will help your plants tremendously with processing what's available in your soil mix. Maybe even boost flavor and aroma!
Also you can put some in a bucket of water with an air stone to create a "worm tea" that the plants love.
For your next grow mix some into your soil (up to 1/3rd) and reap the benefits!

I kind of got off topic there but, using worm castings as a top dressing, would I still need to run some sort of bloom nutes or would that hold me down until harvest? I'm flying blind here and I can read and read what the best method is but for some reason I'm always in a state of panic when I'm messing with my flowering plant lol I just want a nice harvest and to keep the plant alive until then

 

[Southerncough]

Yeah, worm poo won't hurt at all! Especially in soil. If you're nervous, start will a few handfuls on top at first and go from there.
If you see a bottle that says "fish emulsion", that's some good sh*t too BUT buyer beware that it stinks to high heaven and you will smell like it for a day or two no matter how many times you scrub! LOL

 

[Southerncough]

I kind of got off topic there but, using worm castings as a top dressing, would I still need to run some sort of bloom nutes or would that hold me down until harvest? I'm flying blind here and I can read and read what the best method is but for some reason I'm always in a state of panic when I'm messing with my flowering plant lol I just want a nice harvest and to keep the plant alive until then

I don't think they'd get you there on their own, just a great amendment to help your plant process what's in the soil, especially if your plants are acting weird. It's kind of like sending them a personal chef, the Beneficial microbes help break down minerals in the soil into a usable format for the plant AND help deliver it to the plants when they need it.

As for what else to feed them, hard to say without knowing exactly what they've got. Best guess is to equip them to process what's available, wait and watch for signs of deficiencies. They're going to crave less nitrogen and more potassium and phosphorus further into bloom as they pack on weight, so keep an eye out for that. Even a little tomato fertilizer could help.

 

[HarrySchleem69]

I don't think they'd get you there on their own, just a great amendment to help your plant process what's in the soil, especially if your plants are acting weird. It's kind of like sending them a personal chef, the Beneficial microbes help break down minerals in the soil into a usable format for the plant AND help deliver it to the plants when they need it.

As for what else to feed them, hard to say without knowing exactly what they've got. Best guess is to equip them to process what's available, wait and watch for signs of deficiencies. They're going to crave less nitrogen and more potassium and phosphorus further into bloom as they pack on weight, so keep an eye out for that. Even a little tomato fertilizer could help.

Really the only thing I'm worried about is the nitrogen being too high for their liking because I have some miracle grow soil mixed into the main soil im using and I know how fucked up those time release ferts can be. I plucked out as many of the little fert balls that I saw when I was mixing the soils together but I know I didn't get all of them. Here's a question that I hope you can give me a solid answer for, it will really help me understand better what im dealing with. The MG soil is listed as 0.21% Nitrogen, 0.11% Phosphorus and 0.16% Potassium. If you saw that soil in the store would you tell yourself "oh that's alot of nutes for soil" or would you say "that's not a very strong mix, I can deal with that". What's confusing me is, why do my liquid organic ferts say 1% N, 3% P and 1%K but the soil is "0.00%. Im very confused. And I was never good at math. Which would be stronger and more likely to cause burn issues on my plants. The 1% of this, or the 0.21% of that? I hope I made sense. Basically what I'm asking is, why is the MG soil listed in like decimals and my other stuff is listed as small, whole numbers?

 

[013]

Home dePot has fish ferts ‘bout $8 for quart size and generally speaking watered down fish ferts or worm poop don’t burn.

The soil in that smaller plant looks funky, needs more aeration but mainly looks to be over watered / watered too frequently. She needs to pee real bad then dry out for about 5 days. If that’s a plastic container then tilt her pot and prop it at 45 degree angle for an hour, see how much water drips out of the container. Stabilize it so she doesn’t tip over, or it it’s a grow bag put it on a grate raised up a few inches where air can get underneath.

this will drain the perched water table out, after draining for an hour set it back upright and the pwt will reset itself to more normal balance. then don’t add any water for 5 days, she should green up

 

[HarrySchleem69]

Home dePot has fish ferts ‘bout $8 for quart size and generally speaking watered down fish ferts or worm poop don’t burn.

The soil in that smaller plant looks funky, needs more aeration but mainly looks to be over watered / watered too frequently. She needs to pee real bad then dry out for about 5 days. If that’s a plastic container then tilt her pot and prop it at 45 degree angle for an hour, see how much water drips out of the container. Stabilize it so she doesn’t tip over, or it it’s a grow bag put it on a grate raised up a few inches where air can get underneath.

this will drain the perched water table out, after draining for an hour set it back upright and the pwt will reset itself to more normal balance. then don’t add any water for 5 days, she should green up

Yeah that picture was taken back a couple months ago when I was vegging my current plant. I most certainly put it through some stress. I flushed her soil and cut back on the amount and frequency of her watering and she came back to life. That plant in the picture is the plant that I have in flower now which is why I'm so worried about messing with nutes and stuff. I don't want THAT ^^ to happen again lol

 

[HarrySchleem69]

Home dePot has fish ferts ‘bout $8 for quart size and generally speaking watered down fish ferts or worm poop don’t burn.

The soil in that smaller plant looks funky, needs more aeration but mainly looks to be over watered / watered too frequently. She needs to pee real bad then dry out for about 5 days. If that’s a plastic container then tilt her pot and prop it at 45 degree angle for an hour, see how much water drips out of the container. Stabilize it so she doesn’t tip over, or it it’s a grow bag put it on a grate raised up a few inches where air can get underneath.

this will drain the perched water table out, after draining for an hour set it back upright and the pwt will reset itself to more normal balance. then don’t add any water for 5 days, she should green up

Hey man I have a quick question. Yesterday I fed her just slightly less than 1/4 strength of that flower/bloom stuff but I doubt that's the cause. I think there were fert balls that had already popped and had released alot of nutes into the soil but I noticed this leaf today. It's the only one but several of them are showing signs of nute burn. Is that what this is or could this be a deficiency? I popped a semi-dried fert ball and it released powder instead of liquid so maybe some of them got wet and saturated the soil before I used it and maybe some of them popped and released the powder in the soil. Do you think a really heavy flush would get maybe the majority of it out? I don't want to make the problem worse